The Eloise Butler Hemlock

Minnesota has perhaps fifty mature eastern hemlocks left, and the largest one in Minneapolis was put in the ground by hand. Eloise Butler planted hemlocks in this grove in September 1911, then 28 more on 28 May 1914. The wildflower garden that carries her name grew up around them. The species is Endangered in Minnesota, raised from Special Concern in 2013. This is the far western edge of a range that properly belongs to the Appalachians and the Great Lakes forests, and the garden's own historians describe this stand as probably the oldest southernmost one left in the state. This is the biggest tree in it, on the Minneapolis Heritage Tree List for champion size and named a state co-champion for its species. The figures depend on who held the tape: 75 feet tall and 87 inches round by one account, 80 feet and 84 inches by the garden's own. Either reading describes a hemlock of a size Minnesota does not grow any more. Its age is reasoning rather than record. Nobody wrote down which planting produced this particular tree, but hemlock is slow, and a trunk this thick cannot be one of the saplings added in 1989. That leaves 1911 or 1914, and an age somewhere around 110 to 115 years. The garden is free and gated. It opens mid-April to mid-October and closes on Mondays, so this is not a tree you can visit in the snow.